International Poker Players Association Unveils New Tourney Format

By Nathan Carroll, Rakeback.com Staff Writer

Last week, the International Poker Players Association (IPPA) launched a new exciting tournament format, which kicked off at the Bicycle casino in Los Angeles. The new format was created to promote the IPPA’s first tournament event in Monte Carlo at the end of November, a No-Limit Holdem shootout with the staggeringly high entry fee of $250,000. The field is capped at 48 players, and the tournament director seems confident that the registration cap will be reached, advertising that the tournament prize pool is $12,000,000.

Though the main event is a traditional No-Limit Holdem freezeout, qualifiers to the high-rolling tournament will make use of the new format, which they call an equity re-buy shootout. Like a traditional shootout, the tournament’s first round involves several 10-handed tables that play down to a single winner. Each of those winners is awarded an amount equal to their tournament buy-in and are allowed to continue on to the second round. What’s different about the equity rebuy format is that the players who have already been eliminated by this point are now allowed to rebuy for 9 times the tournament buy-in. The reasoning behind this is that the expected value–or equity–of the players remaining after the payouts of the first round is 9 times the buy-in. When already busted players decide to rebuy for that amount, the ratio of the value of the prize pool to the number of remaining players remains unchanged.

The International Poker Players Association was recently established by Yosh Nakano, a professional poker player who has previous experience as a host and manager at Hustler casino in Los Angeles. The organization’s official website explains that the high-rolling Monte Carlo will “create the foundation for exciting and intriguing televised poker!” A chart lists the entrants in the $12,000,000 tournament, including several famous pros such as Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan (both sponsored by Full Tilt Poker) , and Michael Mizrachi. There are currently 13 players named on the list, with the remaining 35 of the “elite 48” spots allocated to qualifiers from Monte Carlo and The Bike. The tournament begins on November 29.

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